“Show time, LB.”
Major Torres used both arms and a grunt to get him off the tarmac. Taller than LB, she leaned in to shout above the din and wind of the engines.
“Sorry I can’t come.”
“Won’t be much action. This is babysitting.”
“Maybe. But you were right.”
“About what?”
“There’s going to be a nice moon over the desert. Sorry I’ll miss it.”
Torres left him standing on the tarmac to walk up the ramp into the cargo bay. She beckoned to Wally, who stood from his seat along the fuselage wall to walk off the plane with her. The two had a quick, private word on the tarmac. Before she left, they squeezed hands.
Night had fallen, the plane’s wing lights winked. The ground crew removed the wheel chocks while the loadmaster waved for LB to be the last to climb on.
* * *
12 Situational Awareness Data Link.
Chapter 11
Sana’a
Yemen
Josh left the bottle of Scotch with the ambassador.
At his three-room flat inside the embassy compound, he changed to jeans, walking boots, and a loose cotton shirt. Along with the cash, he stuffed three bottles of water, a first aid kit, and a sweater and light jacket into his backpack; the January desert could get cold at night, an oddity for such a blistering place, like chills with a fever.
Before leaving, Josh programmed the CIA’s blue force tracker, using 0724, his mother’s birthday, for the ID code. The all-clear would be **1. Threat levels went up to **4.
A well-worn Range Rover had been assigned to him at the motor pool. Josh drove past the marine guards at the bunker checkpoint, pulling away from the embassy grounds in the northeastern reach of the city. He turned north on Alneser Street, ducking into thick afternoon traffic. Two miles later, before merging onto the Ma’rib road, he stopped at the souk beside the al Ferdos mosque. Josh moved quickly through the market, beardless, dressed like a Westerner, and taller and fairer-skinned than the men around him. He stopped at a food stall for a tin plate of lamb and bean stew, hot flatbread, and sweet black tea. When he finished, Josh headed for the weapons stall.
He stood before a confusion of handguns—vintage Lugers, Smith & Wessons, British police pistols, Czech, Israeli, and Italian makes in a range of calibers and models—arrayed on three walls and tossed in woven baskets like black fruit. After hundreds of years of colonial powers buying tribal loyalty with gifts of weapons, the love of guns had become part of Yemeni culture. In calloused hands the old merchant held samples out to Josh, more eagerly when Josh answered in Arabic. Josh was tempted; he let the grizzled salesman show him several pistols, let him make prices. In the end, Josh didn’t select any firearm. He thought of his mother and father, his sister, the things they’d done in the places they’d gone without a gun. A gun was force, and for years, as a soldier, Josh had been a part of that. His mission called for a diplomat. That’s what he wanted to be. That’s what he’d rely on if things came to it. Plus the tasrih permits, and the cash.
He haggled over a beautiful janbiya with an ivory hilt and carved wood sheath. The tempered steel of the short, curved blade held a marvelous edge. At every public event, Yemeni officials carried these ceremonial knives tucked in their belts. If he wanted to understand this country and his role in it, a janbiya seemed a good step forward. Josh paid the price of a case of scotch. The merchant threw in a black-and-white-checked kefiyeh. Josh asked the old man to show him how to wrap his head. When he was done, the merchant stepped back. He flung out his skinny arms.
“These will fool no one. Buy a gun.”
Soon after leaving the city, Josh passed a police checkpoint. One of the tasrih travel permits did the trick, and he was waved on.
The road to Ma’rib wound its way east, and backward in time. A few miles outside Sana’a, the landscape turned rugged and expansive, sparsely populated. The few habitations reflected the will of an ancient people to cling to such a place. The houses in these uncultivated plains and hills had been built from the scraps of the earth, mud and sticks, scrub brush, straw, and rock. Mile after mile, Josh drove by nothing he could call a village, at most a dozen dwellings lumped together at a time, as if the land could not support more at any one place. Ruins were frequent; their ages could have been an eon or a decade. The horizon was always jagged with hills like badly torn paper, sharp peaks and high buttes in brown and ochre.
The roadway ran through valleys and saddles, rarely straightening out but crooking into switchbacks up and down pebbly slopes. Pavement covered much of the road, though potholes and long stretches of gravel and dust slowed the drive to Ma’rib.
Josh passed few passenger cars; flat-faced trucks made up most of the traffic. Struggling in lower gears with the hills, they spit diesel fumes. The warning of the gun merchant, that Josh would fool no one in his head wrap, prodded him with each wary look he got from a driver or spindly old woman beside the road. Even the mules and camels swung their heads at him in disbelief. In the army, he would never be on his own this way, and unarmed. Maybe this was, after all, what it was like to be a spy.
The elevation climbed through the early half of the afternoon; the vistas became magnificent. The temperature cooled, the sky stayed clear, and Josh drove with the windows down. Civilization disappeared in the highest hills; not until the road descended into canyons and rugged greenery did he again see the stacked stones that once were homes or old terraces where a farmer or herder had worked in a different century.
In Afghanistan, too, the land had reflected the people, the harshness and isolation that were theirs. A man of forty could look eighty. A chiseled face could hide a gentle heart. Danger and hospitality shared a thin barrier. The people were ignorant only of others’ ways, not of their own. It was always a mistake to underestimate them.
The last ten miles was a slow descent out of the mountains. The road skirted the edge of the Ramlat al-Sab‘atayn desert, the western threshold to the Rub‘ al-Khali. With the sun setting at Josh’s back, the shadows on the vastness deepened his sense of isolation. He’d wanted this job more while sitting in Silva’s office than he did right now. The closer Ma’rib came, the better his desk in Cultural Affairs looked. There he had no loose ends with the CIA, the Saudi royal family, or some angry terrorist husband. Parties, menus, and speechwriting weren’t thrilling, but he’d overvalued the excitement he’d gotten out of the military. Josh’s heart had been in his throat a lot of his time in uniform, and he did not miss it.
The road entered Ma’rib from the north, past another government checkpoint just outside the limits. The Yemeni guards were disapproving of an American driving alone and unarmed, then let him pass because the tasrih gave them no choice.
He drove into the city flanked by a dirt airstrip on one side and a string of garages and shops on the other. Josh pulled the Range Rover to the curb to check his map. He’d arrived in good time, an hour and a half before the rendezvous. The designated place was in the eastern outskirts, in the parking lot of a fruit and vegetable market. Josh rolled up his windows. Carefully, he drove south through the town.
In the warm dusk, the long main street was a chaotic mangle. Hastily built cinderblock huts hunkered beside mud-brick business fronts, taller offices of solid and newer construction, and open garages thrown up inside corrugated steel walls and a sliding, padlocked door. Riders sat on their parked motorcycles chatting. Men idled on plastic chairs beside shop stalls. Young men in sandals, Western T-shirts, and short beards moved in packs talking on cell phones. No women were present on the street.
Josh drove away from Ma’rib’s center. Two miles south the land quickly opened to crops and groves quilted into the dry countryside. Some grander homes stood inside walled courtyards, gazing at each other like chess pieces. The road led near the ruins of biblical Ma’rib. In the half-light, the high mud walls of the old city took on ru
sty silhouettes. Josh turned down a tourist track to the site. He parked there, facing the earthen skyscrapers of Sheba while the land darkened and the time approached. An ebony Mercedes sedan pulled into the empty parking lot of the vegetable market. It stopped and shut down in the early winter night. The two cars faced each other for minutes, until the Mercedes flashed its lights. Josh flashed back. This was not a prearranged signal; it seemed a little amateurish.
Josh grabbed his backpack out of the trunk and locked the embassy car. As he strolled across the lot, the Mercedes fired up and, with lights off, eased toward him. Josh was not surprised to find Khalil al-Din behind the wheel.
The Yemeni set an elbow in the open window, breezy. He wore a black parka and turtleneck, dark like his mustache.
“Joshua Cofield. You’re on time. I’m happy to see you.”
“Colonel.”
“Get in.”
“Not just yet.”
The car’s windows were deeply tinted. Josh ducked to peer past Khalil, who withdrew his elbow from the sill.
“The time for questions was before this, Joshua. We need to go.”
In the backseat, a woman in a gray burqa leaned against the passenger-side door and window. A mesh panel veiled her eyes. Josh addressed her in Arabic.
“Princess. Hello.”
She did not sit up or turn her head. Josh stood erect. He folded his arms and looked across them at Khalil.
“What’s up?”
“She took a sedative. She was understandably nervous. Now please, get in the car. We can talk after we’re moving.”
Josh stood beside the Mercedes in balance: he had as many reasons for climbing in as he did for walking away.
“What am I doing here?”
“The Americans have an interest in the princess going home. I don’t know what that interest is. You’re the American observer. Nothing more.”
“Did you ask for me specifically?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I tried to do you a favor.”
“I’m not a spy.”
“Whatever you are, get in the car.”
“I’m not so sure about this, Colonel.”
Khalil took his foot from the brake to let the Mercedes drift forward.
“Then get used to writing speeches.”
Josh jogged alongside, clapping a hand on the driver’s windowsill. Khalil braked. Josh leaned in to keep his voice down.
“I’m just a diplomat. You know that, right?”
“Yes. Fine.”
“You’re the spy.”
“Joshua.”
“Give me this one.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because somebody’s got to be a fucking spy.”
Khalil ran fingers down his mustache, then dipped his head. He flicked on the sedan’s headlights to show his impatience. But this small concession—that through the night each would be in their admitted roles and, just as importantly, there was a bona fide spy along—tipped the scale. Josh moved to walk around the Mercedes’s hood. Khalil stopped him.
“Money. Did you bring it?”
“It’s in my pack.”
“The transit permits?”
“Them, too.”
“Good. No more questions. Get in.”
Josh climbed in front. In the rear, the princess didn’t flinch.
The car crunched out of the market’s parking lot onto the road. Khalil did not speak but focused on driving. A pair of motorbikes puttered past, then the Mercedes was the only vehicle on the road.
Josh turned to look at the woman. She was inert, covered head to foot by charcoal folds. Only her left hand lay exposed on the seat.
“Princess?”
Khalil shook his head. “She won’t hear you. She’ll be out for a while.”
Josh watched the princess’s covered breast until he caught the slightest rise and fall of her breathing. He wanted to smack the back of Khalil’s head.
“What’d she take?”
“I’d like to say this as gently as I can. That is not your concern.”
“You want to tell me what is my concern?”
The Yemeni raised and lowered fingers on the steering wheel, a sort of shrug with his hands.
“Why don’t you close your eyes for a while? I’ll get us on the N5 and wake you both later. There’ll be a moon tonight over the desert.”
“Tell me one more thing.”
“If I can.”
“Who is she? I mean, to rate all this.”
“A princess, going home to her family. Just like you’ve been briefed.”
The Mercedes left behind the measly lights of Ma’rib. Khalil sped through the last patches of irrigated fields, past a bobbing cluster of oil derricks. In a minute, with greater suddenness than Josh had seen even outside Riyadh, the Empty Quarter lay everywhere.
He plunged into it beside an unconscious Saudi royal, an admitted spy, and too much uncertainty. He tried to appreciate the stars, the comfort of the Mercedes, and the seeming ease of the mission. Just ride. Observe.
From his pack, Josh plucked the blue force tracker. Khalil glanced over but made no comment. The slim thing gave Josh some small confidence. Someone was out there keeping an eye on him—American spies.
Josh keyed in his ID code, 0724. Then **1, the all-clear.
Chapter 12
Al-Husn
Ma’rib
Yemen
Arif woke in his office chair. A vehicle passed below his open balcony, crunching gravel. He rubbed the short nap out of his eyes and walked onto the landing to watch the ruby taillights disappear down the lane. It was not Nadya.
Full night had fallen, the Maghrib prayer finished an hour ago. He checked for the time. 6:31 p.m. Arif scratched his beard, wondering about dinner, the whereabouts of his wife. Normally Nadya locked the clinic at half past five and drove the two miles straight home. He called her cell and office, to no answer. She’d been distant all week, removed while he’d hunted her father. This morning she seemed to have allowed a thaw. Arif had been looking forward to tonight. The link with Abd al-Aziz had given up nothing more in four days, and he did not trust it enough to explore the prince’s computer much longer. He was going to shut it down tonight and was eager to tell Nadya, and thank her.
Sitting at the computer, Arif checked his own messages in case she’d emailed him that she was working late. Perhaps she was handling a difficult birth or some unseen emergency of a teenage girl’s heart. He roamed downstairs to look for a note he might have missed during the day. He climbed the stairs again, worry mounting with each step.
Arif returned to the connection to the prince’s computer. The blank screen made him eager to free himself from the man, then go in search of his wife. But he wanted Nadya with him when he did it, a symbolic return to her. Arif rested his chin in his palm, to decide.
The screen stirred.
Abd al-Aziz had launched a simple word processing program.
A blank white page glowed in Arif’s office.
The prince typed.
Arif.
The lamp knocked over as Arif recoiled. Breath froze in his chest. Needles shot into his ribs and arms. The lamp lay sideways on the floor, its bulb not broken, beaming a skewed, macabre light into the room.
The prince typed again.
I have taken my daughter back.
Arif leaped to his feet as if the prince had said this to him in person. He could not think what to do except stare at the screen. The link had been reversed; Abd al-Aziz was now inside Arif.
Answer.
Arif’s cell phone rang.
He stumbled away from the desk, then crept back for the jangling phone. The caller identity read UNKNOWN. Arif took up the phone, breathing into it for several seconds befor
e answering.
“Yes?”
He twitched, waiting for a voice.
“Arif.”
The prince, unmistakably.
“Yes.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
The computer screen blinked to black. The phone line went dead.
He staggered backward to the balcony, where he could stand in open air. He faced the starlit waves of the desert’s rim, the dark street below with no cars on it.
Arif redialed Nadya’s cell. He imagined his wife hearing the ring, restrained, unable to pick up, frightened. He set the phone aside and wiped his hand down his T-shirt.
Arif flung both hands to his temples to contain his thoughts. The prince had been staring back at him through the computer; how? For how long? Arif scanned the street again, fast, for black-clad Saudi agents come to assassinate him. Only the crinkle of insects and the far-off thrum of oil pumps reached the balcony. He swiped sweat from his brow into his hair and clutched the back of his head.
How did this backfire on him? When did it happen? Was he betrayed?
His head burst with questions. But the greater pang struck in his chest. He dropped his arms.
Abd al-Aziz had Nadya.
He gave himself a moment of calm to prepare for what would follow. He’d known this day might come, but he’d never predicted facing it without Nadya. The prince had struck back in a way Arif hadn’t foreseen. If he had, he’d never have chosen this path.
In the office, he righted the lamp and checked the computer. The cyber link had been severed. Quickly, Arif changed out of his futa skirt and sandals to blue jeans and sneakers.
From a desk drawer he grabbed the loaded 9 mm Makarov pistol he’d taken off a dead Russian long ago, when he was a mujahideen.
Arif ran into the dark village streets. He had no holster for the Makarov but didn’t care if he was seen carrying the gun. After tonight, his time in al-Husn would be done.
Entering the village, he dashed through the market, dodging merchants as they closed their stalls and kiosks, rolled carpets, stowed goods in crates. Emerging from the long market alley, Arif flew past fine houses and hovels lit for the evening meal.
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